


Stories

by billspilledquill



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Donate 1$ for Nick in need, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, help him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 15:18:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13149399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: “What the fuck,” he said, looking at Gatsby with that hole near his belly, scarlet red and bleeding, beside him, beside him and smiling.“Hello, old sport,” he smiled one of that smile that was all teeth, white flesh contrasted with whiter teeth. “How are you?”And Nick, being the calm and controlled person he was, repeated, “What the fuck, Jay?”In which Nick is trying to understand the existence of ghosts and fails miserably.





	Stories

Nick wasn’t a disillusioned person. Yes, sometimes he could get intense and imagine some metaphors about some lights across the bay, _thank you very much_ , but Nick wasn’t blind.

He could see the blood, the red, the disgusting hole that pierce his chest and held his heart in hostage, and it was dead, it is dead, he knew, he had knew it when he had heard the sifting wind and the bullet flew, flys and still fly while he grieved with more tears and franticness than grace he wish he possessed. He knew all that, and yet.

“What the fuck,” he said, looking at Gatsby with that hole near his belly, scarlet red and bleeding, beside him, beside him and smiling.

“Hello, old sport,” he smiled one of that smile that was all teeth, white flesh contrasted with whiter teeth. “How are you?”

And Nick, being the calm and controlled person he was, repeated, “What the fuck, Jay?”

Gatsby only left a chuckle, light and soft and Nick forgot about all that craziness for a moment. “I will explain, if you want.”

 _You are fucking dead, you don’t get to explain anything_ , “Please do.”

His skin was transparent, and they were no veins underneath it, “I sometimes come back here,” he sighed, “I missed here.” He laid his hand on the floor, trying to sit down, but he soon jerk that hand away when the hand passed through the carpeted floor.

Nick wanted to laugh at how nostalgic he was if he wasn’t ready to cry with gratitude to have him back, “You will stay here?”

He shook his head, “No, there is no reason for me to stay, “ he said, “but I come back once in a while, for memories, what.”

“Oh,” Nick said, “okay.” — _You died there that pool you remember I was in the other side of the line and I was waiting and you didn’t want to wait and now you can’t stay because you can’t wait either you are a man who hated to wait yet you make us wait you make me wait for your return and be gone as soon as possible you_

He was in no position to ask but he asked anyway, “Why today? What is so special today?”

“I saw you, “ he shrugged, “so I came.”

Nick couldn’t help but laugh, “What? Are you like God, looking over us with a creepy stare?”

He shrugged again, “If you insist.”

 

 

 

“Are you the only one that came back here, old sport?” He asked one day, with his legs dangling on his old laundries that seemed like a hundred years old, “No one ever come back?”

“There’s the secretary that visit sometimes, “ he tried to amend in this palace full of dust, “and there’s time when the gardener took care of those flowers,” he pointed outside of the house, revealing a bush full of dried flowers and daisies, a lot of daisies, “well, I’m usually here once in a month, but since there’s... you, “ he gestured vaguely at him, “I try to come more often.”

“I’m certainly glad for this, old sport, “ he smiled, “I am certainly delighted to have you here.”

Well I am not, “When— you know—“, he hesitated, and his hands suddenly felt too heavy, “I mean,” he stared at the window, then at Gatsby. He was still smiling.

“I am not busy old sport, I have all the time of the day.”

“Yeah. Okay. No, never mind.” He spluttered, Gatsby’s eyes dimmed. “Forget about it.”

Gatsby waited, and Nick felt that the curtains need to be closed, because the wind was too strong. Then he remembered Gatsby can’t have any sensation at all except that reddened scar, small and dark, and so much more resonant than the green dot across the bay. He had waited all his life, and eventually winded up dead. Pathetic, he want to say. Wait, his heart supplied.

Nick waited for Gatsby to speak.

Suddenly he felt that he knew too much about the man and so little about his words; there was a way in which he speak felt like lying— every word and every expression he put on himself while he was alive were so blatantly wrong and felt wrong that nobody expected anything about him— and oh

If Daisy was the green light, guiding the misguided, then Gatsby was the river, further you sail, the closer you were from home. Consciously or not, Nick blinked, blinded by something soft and comfortable.

When he opened them, Gatsby and the river were gone, and only left Nick and the small bleeding scar. Small enough for when the river pierced them, it felt like a caress of water, of an lover.

 

 

 

He didn’t know why he kept coming back.

He hurried back to the mansion, scrolling down Wall Street, the rocks beneath his feet felt especially heavy and cold. Some faces were slightly familiar, yet most of the unknown. They may be upstarts, businessmen, immigrants or just plain passengers. He averted his eyes and his hatred away from buildings, from beings, and focused of the hardness of the marbles under his feet, and towards the path of the hunted mansion.

(Oh god, he really hoped it is still hunted.)

He had hated New York since that incident— when it exactly occurred? It seemed to have a gap of dreadful silence between that summer and now — hated its people, hated its enthusiasm, its endless series of parties, and proceed to forget them so quickly that it needed to amass another one, with people more excited than the previous ones. Yet it seemed to him that he was not in New York when he was in Gatsby’s house, the quiet, the silent and the desperate yearning, the dusted windows and a slight image of a man, covered in sliver, waiting still.

It all seemed so different, the climate of this country, how the birds migrated to the south, and Gatsby’s mansion, empty yet so, so full of life.

“A nice day, isn’t it?”

That was probably why he did not need any hint for Gatsby’s presence. Its presence was enough of one. Impossible to ignore.

(Like pale gold, he thought, _golden_.)

“You caught me,” a sigh, then the transparent figure loomed over to impose himself back to Nick’s life as if he had never retreated, “as if you were some kind of psychic.”

“I may as well be one,” he said, “it’s not like I can see ghosts or something.”

“You get a point,” Gatsby smiled, and not mentioning his days of disappearance nor his ability to wander around mansions without being caught—because he was a fucking ghost — “it seems that I am the visible sigh of the invisible light, huh?”

“Don’t compare yourself to sunlight, mr. Thomas Parke D’Invilliers,” Nick said, amused. “I wasn’t aware you have much of a poet soul, sir.”

“Oh stop it, old sport,” Gatsby chuckled, “I am only poetic when dead.”

Sunlights creeped through, lightening the smooth edges of Gatsby’s hand, transparent with a tinge of that pale, almost uncomfortable yellow, and in a moment of utter confusion and impulsiveness, Nick reached out, and oh—

There was nothing.

He felt nothing, his fingertips touched the soft fabrics of Gatsby’s shirts, the cold air of the afternoon, and his eyes were filled with Gatsby’s face, his lids, his lips, his smile and—

His hands felt cold.

“Two things, old sport,” he heard Gatsby’s voice, firm and strong, “there’s nothing more I wish than to talk to you.”

Gatsby stood up, “I wish that I have time to tell you how I get here, I wish I had time to see Daisy, I wish I had time to hear you talk about your life, I never got time to do it.” He put his hand on Nick’s, smiling bitterly, “I wish to do this do.”

He crowded Nick and put his lips on his cheeks, his eyelids, his forehead, “I wish to do this too, Nick, I would like to do this.” He trailed his fingers down his body, only cold aid resisted and stayed in Nick’s memory of that day. “And this,” he touched his lips, “and this,” his hair, “and this,” his fingers. “So much, Nick, so much.”

Nick gaped, trying to return the embrace, but Gatsby pulled away.

“Second, Nick, take this as my only lesson to you. The one you deserve to know, ” The voice felt foreign, “do not believe in ghosts.”

 

 

 

“Darling?” His wife inquired, “is everything alright?”

His son played with his shirt, drooling all over it. Nick laughed, half-heartedly ordered him to stop. “Nothing Martha, he said, looking at the snow and the window and the baby. He blinked, and there were still here. He had been doing this for two years, just to make sure.

“Just remembered some silly ghost stories.” He promised to tell them to her one day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays!! I hope you enjoyed this totally non-christmas related story on christmas :D comments and kudos will be treasured and printed on my wall


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